You can’t blame the power plant operators for building a plant to burn animal waste. They are merely responding to the distorted market. You can blame the citizens of North Carolina for voting in the sort of legislators who would bring us Senate Bill 3. (And, yes, I understand that many of my friends voted for it, as they tried to get the best compromise possible. That does not mean that it is a good thing. That just means that they saved us from something even worse.)
I can’t wait for the noise from all the environmentalists, who are sure to complain about the siting of the animal waste plant, no matter where it is proposed to be built.
I think that these folks will not be happy until we are all equally miserable, sitting in our cold, dark, government subsidized apartments near a light rail line, and eating tofu and alfalfa sprouts. (That is, after biking home the last mile from the train station, wearing our goofy looking bike helmets.) Real Americans will never stand for this, despite the best efforts of environmentalists, government planners, and nanny-staters to emasculate and annoy us. America was not built by the timid and the collectivist. America was not built by people who would circumvent rational economics by putting their faith in blunt instruments such as SB3.
SB3 contains the following definition: ” ‘Renewable energy resource’ means a solar electric, solar thermal, wind, hydropower, geothermal, or ocean current or wave energy resource; a biomass resource, including agricultural waste, animal waste, wood waste, spent pulping liquors, combustible residues, combustible liquids, combustible gases, energy crops, or landfill methane; waste heat derived from a renewable energy resource and used to produce electricity or useful, measurable thermal energy at a retail electric customer’s facility; or hydrogen derived from a renewable energy resource. ‘Renewable energy resource’ does not include peat, a fossil fuel, or nuclear energy resource.”
OK. So, let’s get this straight: Our legislators undoubtedly fancy themselves to be better scientists and engineers than anyone employed by Progress Energy or Duke Power. They have decreed from on high which power sources that power companies must use in North Carolina. This is the absolutely last thing that they should have done. The market would provide much more satisfactory results than this legislative straitjacket that we have placed “renewable energy” technologies into. What happens when somebody develops something better than one of the listed technologies in this bill? I hope that he has a better lobbyist on the payroll than do the vested interests that represent these technologies that are now enshrined in statute.
Lastly, why is nuclear power not considered “renewable” under this bill? We have as much uranium available as we could reasonably use for electricity generation, so nuclear fission is a practically inexhaustible resource for generations to come. And, despite the ignorant bleating of NCWARN and the rest of the left, nuclear power is perfectly safe, as it is engineered in the United States.
In the end, the whole new North Carolina energy paradigm promulgated by SB3 can only be described in one way: chicken-sh**.
Maxsays
Amen!
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You can’t blame the power plant operators for building a plant to burn animal waste. They are merely responding to the distorted market. You can blame the citizens of North Carolina for voting in the sort of legislators who would bring us Senate Bill 3. (And, yes, I understand that many of my friends voted for it, as they tried to get the best compromise possible. That does not mean that it is a good thing. That just means that they saved us from something even worse.)
I can’t wait for the noise from all the environmentalists, who are sure to complain about the siting of the animal waste plant, no matter where it is proposed to be built.
I think that these folks will not be happy until we are all equally miserable, sitting in our cold, dark, government subsidized apartments near a light rail line, and eating tofu and alfalfa sprouts. (That is, after biking home the last mile from the train station, wearing our goofy looking bike helmets.) Real Americans will never stand for this, despite the best efforts of environmentalists, government planners, and nanny-staters to emasculate and annoy us. America was not built by the timid and the collectivist. America was not built by people who would circumvent rational economics by putting their faith in blunt instruments such as SB3.
SB3 contains the following definition: ” ‘Renewable energy resource’ means a solar electric, solar thermal, wind, hydropower, geothermal, or ocean current or wave energy resource; a biomass resource, including agricultural waste, animal waste, wood waste, spent pulping liquors, combustible residues, combustible liquids, combustible gases, energy crops, or landfill methane; waste heat derived from a renewable energy resource and used to produce electricity or useful, measurable thermal energy at a retail electric customer’s facility; or hydrogen derived from a renewable energy resource. ‘Renewable energy resource’ does not include peat, a fossil fuel, or nuclear energy resource.”
OK. So, let’s get this straight: Our legislators undoubtedly fancy themselves to be better scientists and engineers than anyone employed by Progress Energy or Duke Power. They have decreed from on high which power sources that power companies must use in North Carolina. This is the absolutely last thing that they should have done. The market would provide much more satisfactory results than this legislative straitjacket that we have placed “renewable energy” technologies into. What happens when somebody develops something better than one of the listed technologies in this bill? I hope that he has a better lobbyist on the payroll than do the vested interests that represent these technologies that are now enshrined in statute.
Lastly, why is nuclear power not considered “renewable” under this bill? We have as much uranium available as we could reasonably use for electricity generation, so nuclear fission is a practically inexhaustible resource for generations to come. And, despite the ignorant bleating of NCWARN and the rest of the left, nuclear power is perfectly safe, as it is engineered in the United States.
In the end, the whole new North Carolina energy paradigm promulgated by SB3 can only be described in one way: chicken-sh**.
Amen!